Job 27
Job 27 is the closing speech of the dialogue cycles. Bildad has collapsed in six verses (ch. 25). Zophar will never speak again. Job is given the last word, and he opens with what the Hebrew calls a mashal - a sustained, formal, sworn discourse - and proceeds to take the most famous oath of integrity in the Old Testament. As God liveth, who hath taken away my judgment… all the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils; surely my lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit. God forbid that I should justify you: till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: my heart shall not reproach me so long as I live (27:2-6).
The oath is one of the most theologically loaded passages in the wisdom literature, and the heart of its weight is a Hebrew word: tom. The same word God Himself had used of Job in the prologue. That man was perfect (tam) and upright (Job 1:1). There is none like him in the earth, a perfect (tam) and an upright man (1:8). He still holdeth fast his integrity (tumato), although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause (2:3). For three chapters the LORD has been calling Job tam; for thirty chapters the friends have been arguing the LORD was wrong about him. Job 27 is Job refusing to surrender what God Himself had already said. The book's deepest tension is here in this oath. Job is the only character in his three-chapter conversation with the friends who has read chapters 1 and 2 of the book he is in - and he refuses to talk himself out of what God said about him there.
The chapter then closes (vv. 13-23) with a long description of the fate of the wicked that sounds remarkably like the friends' own theology. Many scholars suspect the editor may have placed a missing Zophar speech in Job's mouth, since Zophar never gets a third speech and vv. 13-23 are very close to the kind of thing Zophar would have said. Whether ironic, conceded, or simply quoted-back-at-them, Job's point is clear: even granting everything the friends have said about the fate of the wicked, none of it applies to Job. Job is not the wicked. The catalog they keep aiming at his life is hitting someone else entirely. The chapter is Job's closing argument: I am not who you think I am, and I will not lie about who I am.
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Job 27:1-6The Oath of Integrity
1Moreover Job continued his parable, and said, 2As God liveth, who hath taken away my judgment; and the Almighty, who hath vexed my soul; 3All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils; 4Surely my lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit. 5God forbid that I should justify you: till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me. 6My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: my heart shall not reproach me so long as I live.
The Hebrew of v. 1 - vayyosef Iyyov se'et meshalo - literally “and Job continued to lift up his mashal” - uses the same formal term the Old Testament uses for Balaam's oracles (Num. 23:7, 18; 24:3, 15) and the wisdom poems of the prophets (Isa. 14:4; Mic. 2:4). A mashal is a formal, sworn, weighty statement, not casual speech. The chapter is telling the reader that what follows is not Job's ordinary lament but a formal oath under the witness of God Himself. The chapter is the closing legal statement of the book's deepest case.
Verse 2 is theologically remarkable. Job swears by the very God who has, by his own complaint, “taken away my judgment” and “vexed my soul.” The Bible does not soften the paradox. Job is not pretending the God he is swearing by has been kind to him. He is swearing by the God whose hand he experiences as the source of his suffering, the same God he refuses to lie about himself to please. The chapter is asking the reader to feel the strangeness: Job's oath is held together by the very God whose treatment of him he is in the process of protesting. The integrity is real because the One whose name he swears by is real, regardless of how His current providence feels.
Job 27:7-12Let My Enemy Be as the Wicked
7Let mine enemy be as the wicked, and he that riseth up against me as the unrighteous. 8For what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained, when God taketh away his soul? 9Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him? 10Will he delight himself in the Almighty? will he always call upon God? 11I will teach you by the hand of God: that which is with the Almighty will I not conceal. 12Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether vain?
Verse 7 is one of the more theologically uncomfortable sentences in the chapter. Let mine enemy be as the wicked, and he that riseth up against me as the unrighteous. Job is, with deliberate provocation, applying the friends' categorization of him (he is wicked, he is unrighteous) to his actual enemies - including, implicitly, the friends themselves. The chapter is teaching that there are moments in the Christian life when speaking the friends' theology back at them is the only honest move left. The friends have classified Job as wicked. Job, in v. 7, agrees to use that classification - and applies it to the people who classified him that way. The Bible records the move without softening it. It is the same kind of rhetorical reversal Christ uses on the Pharisees throughout the gospels (cf. Matt. 23:13-33, the seven woes).
Verses 11-12 contain the chapter's most striking pedagogical move. I will teach you by the hand of God: that which is with the Almighty will I not conceal. Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether vain?3 Job is announcing that he is going to teach the friends doctrine of God - the very subject they have been trying to teach him. The chapter is inverting the pedagogical hierarchy. The student is taking the teacher's seat. And what the student is going to teach is the same theology the teachers should have known but didn't. The Bible is making a point that runs through the whole canon: God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise (1 Cor. 1:27). The sufferer on the ash heap will end up teaching the comfortable theologians the things they should have known about God all along.
Job 27:13-23The Fate of the Wicked (One Last Time)
13This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of the Almighty. 14If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword: and his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread. 16Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay; 17He may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver. 18He buildeth his house as a moth, and as a booth that the keeper maketh. 19The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he openeth his eyes, and he is not. 20Terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night. 23Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place.
Verses 13-23 are one of the most discussed text-critical puzzles in the book of Job. The passage describes the fate of the wicked in language remarkably similar to what Zophar would have said had he given a third speech (cf. Zophar's second speech in Job 20). Zophar never speaks again after chapter 20, and many scholars have suspected that the editor placed Zophar's missing material in Job's mouth. Other readers - both ancient and modern - read the passage as Job sincerely affirming what is true about the wicked, in order to distinguish himself from them. Either way, the passage's rhetorical effect is to grant the friends what is true in their theology of the wicked (yes, the wicked do eventually face judgment) while withholding the misapplication (Job is not the wicked). The chapter is performing surgical theological argument: agreeing on the principle, disagreeing on the diagnosis.
Verse 19 contains a haunting image. The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he openeth his eyes, and he is not. The verse is one of the most psychologically vivid pictures of sudden death in the Old Testament. The rich man lies down rich, opens his eyes - and is not. The Greek parallel that comes to mind is Christ's parable of the rich fool: Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? (Luke 12:20). The chapter is documenting the same dynamic Christ would later parable. Possessions accumulated in this life do not transfer. The eye that opens at the moment of death opens onto a world where the silver and the raiment do not come along.
Further study
- Hebrew text with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Ramban on Job's oath of integrity - including the rabbinic discussion of why Job uses tom (the exact word God used of him in the prologue) and the long-running scholarly question of whether vv. 13-23 originally belonged to Zophar's missing third speech.
- Job 27:4-6 ↔ 1 Peter 2:22 · 2 Corinthians 5:21Intertextual BibleJob's oath that his lips will not speak wickedness, his tongue will not utter deceit, and he will not let go of his righteousness, finds its perfect fulfillment in Christ - who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth (1 Pet 2:22) - and its gift in 2 Corinthians 5:21.
- Job's Integrity in the Prologue (Job 1-2)Bible Odyssey (SBL)SBL background on the framing prologue in which God Himself describes Job as tam (perfect, blameless) - the verdict the friends spend thirty chapters trying to overturn and Job spends his oath in chapter 27 refusing to surrender.
Where this echoes in Scripture
The Oath of Integrity
- Job 1:1, 8; 2:3That man was perfect (<em>tam</em>) and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.God Himself uses the word Job swears by in 27:5. The prologue is the warrant.
- 1 Peter 2:22-23Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.Christ’s perfect fulfillment of Job’s 27:4 oath.
- 2 Corinthians 5:21For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.The deeper righteousness Christ gives - answering the question Job’s 27:6 oath cannot yet finally resolve.
Let My Enemy Be as the Wicked
- Matthew 23:13-33Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!Christ’s seven woes on the religious establishment - the same reversal Job 27:7 enacts in miniature against the friends.
- 1 Corinthians 1:27God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.Paul’s formalization of what Job 27:11-12 dramatizes.
The Fate of the Wicked (One Last Time)
- Proverbs 13:22A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.The wisdom-tradition’s formal statement of Job 27:17.
- Matthew 5:5Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.Christ’s formal version of Job 27:17 - at the deepest scale.
- Luke 12:20Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.Christ’s parable of the rich fool - a direct inheritor of Job 27:19.